The following excerpt is from John Muir's Yosemite Journal of 1873. It describes climbing onto a ledge behind Yosemite Falls at night. These handwritten notes, transcribed by exhibition curator Dorris Welch, became the basis for "The Yosemite," published in 1912.

"I went out on the narrow bench close alongside the wild rushing waters and began to admire the rare beauty of the thin gauzy waters ... which formed the edge of the fall. I could see the most delicate threads of its fairy tissue by noting the moon behind it. Wishing to look at the moon through the meshes of some of the denser portions of the fall I crept farther behind it while it was gently wind swayed without taking thought about the consequences of its returning when the wind would change. The effect was enchanting. Wild music above, beneath, around the moon apparently in the very midst of the wild waters flashing. Out in ... among the denser waters now darkened by a rush of comets.

"I was in fairyland between the black wall and the well illumined waters but suffered sudden disenchantment for I was stricken by a hissing down rush of water that felt hard as hailstones shot from a gun.

"By that instinct that we call ... presence of mind I dropped on my knees, laid hold of an angle of the rock, rolled myself like a ball with my face against my bosom and submitted to my terrible baptism." {sbox}

Reprinted by permission of John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library.